Cain’s campaign told the New Hampshire Union Leader it wanted no videotaping of his interview, scheduled for this morning, with New Hampshire Union Leader Publisher Joseph McQuaid, editorial page director Andrew Cline and this reporter.
C-SPAN videotaped and broadcast on its network and website our recent interviews with Romney, Perry and Santorum.
Was the Cain “no-video” demand related to the Milwaukee paper’s video, which the Cain campaign suggested was presented “out of context in some measure” (a charge the Journal-Sentinel’s editor strongly denied)? Or was it just a coincidence?
We may never know.
His national communications director did not return our call yesterday seeking a simple explanation of why they didn’t want C-SPAN in the room.
And as of late yesterday, it was very much up in the air whether the scheduled 60-minute interview was going to take place at all.
The only public event on Cain’s schedule today is a rally at the Radisson Hotel in Nashua.

After confusion arose over whether the interview had been cancelled, Cain’s campaign apparently scheduled another event at roughly the same time and said Cain could appear at the newspaper for only 20 minutes.
Publisher Joseph McQuaid rejected the suggestion, telling the campaign that if Cain could not appear for the full 60 minutes, then there would be no interview.
McQuaid said today that 20 minutes was not enough time for a “formal, sit-down interview” during which he and other newspaper staff “size up” the candidates.
About 45 minutes after Cain’s 10 a.m. appointment, Union Leader Senior Political Reporter John DiStaso received a brief telephone message from Cain New Hampshire spokesman Charlie Spano.
“I hope we can connect in the future,” Spano said. Spano did not return our additional call seeking further comment.

Comments

Yeah I can see your point. Particularly from a state’s rights point of view. I still don’t like open primaries though but that has always been a personal preference.

I still think however that the advantage of having candidates interact with smaller states first does help a great deal. If you make a good impression then that will aid you. If you flub it, that will sink you.

Dr. Paul has run his own small business and worked in government. He works 12-16 hours a day and could probably out bike ride most of us. The more I read and listen to him the more I like him, if for no other reason, he’ll totally piss the Elites off.

I’ve never been on the Cain Train, but I really like to listen to Herman, but I’m getting embarrassed watching his performance. He’s like the LeRoy Jenkins (WoW reference) of the GOP race.

Joe November 18th, 2011 @ 12:13 am

K_Bob, you and I are not running for President. Herman Cain just raised $10 million and can’t get someone to advise him on Cuban issues? I could have done it by a few emails and I am not even Cuban.

Joe November 18th, 2011 @ 12:15 am

Paul is actually the most fiscally conservative of the bunch (and least statist). Too bad he is nuts (on most everything else).

Yes, there is also the advantage that unknown, poorly funded candidates have a chance in the smaller states by just going around and meeting the voters. They can make their case.

When larger states move to the front, or holding regional or national primaries, then only candidates like Romney and Perry and Hillary who have an established national network of fundraisers and donors can even get it.

I don’t think he actually made a mistake there. Federal employees DO have “collective bargaining,” they just do not have the right to strike.

But Squirmin’ Herman has created such a trail of gaffes and clarifications and contradictions now that a hesitant answer fits the narrative of a mistake-prone unprepared candidate. When it rains, it pours.

Remember after Cain won the Florida Straw Poll Sarah Palin caught some flack for her remark that he was “the flavor of the month.”

But after Trump, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and now Gingrich, she is looking prophetic. No wonder the Santorum people are hopeful – why not them after Gingrich inevitably falls back?

Anonymous November 18th, 2011 @ 12:37 am

What special FP knowledge does Mittens have?

Anonymous November 18th, 2011 @ 5:01 am

OK, Joe, you’ve inspired a rant (most of it not directed at you personally)

You are aware that Florida is a big-ass state, and even in South Fla. there are tons of major issues besides the Cuban population, I’m sure.

Everyone should bone up. We all get that, and only a moron wouldn’t, so that’s overblown. And this is NOT about supporting Cain, which you may have missed. (Your “all is well” comment).

The rant:

It’s about this bizarre tendency for some foolish Republicans to seek out Candidate Bad-Ass McBrilliant, out of fear that anything less will LOSE!!! omg!, omg!, omg!, despite all the amazing evidence to the contrary. Despite our very history that shows that humble men of decent education and normal capacity, like John Adams and George Washington (not exactly the Einstein of his age), Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan are the kind of leaders that made the nation great. (The genius, Ben Franklin and the brilliant renaissance man, Thomas Jefferson were excellent and crucial founding fathers, but clearly, not of the Washington mold at all.)

It isn’t smooth-sounding Ivy-leaguers or scheming Rhodes Scholars or PhD’s from Johns Hopkins who have ever done this country any good. It’s the plain talking folks with PRINCIPLES who hold the union together.

Perry is being crucified, not for his border issues or the principles he is claiming to rely upon, but for his performance in debates. Cain is being hypercritically observed for every moment of the day, just like they did with Palin (the Paul Revere comments anyone?). No one asks Cain questions relevant to his actual experience (most members of the press aren’t well enough versed in business or technology to ask such questions with any intelligence). And we are supposed to believe these people are stupid, right? Nevermind countless facts to the contrary (Palin’s obvious command of energy policy, for example), nevermind the obvious requirements of their previous jobs (did anyone claiming “W” was stupid ever pilot a jet fighter?), nevermind the withering scorn that never stops–much of it from these same foolish “Republicans.” And, lost in all the noise, the obvious question: hey, if Mr. Blog Critic or Panel pundit is so damned great, why isn’t HE up there, running for President?

Reagan’s 11th commandment is actually one that serves a purpose. The idea is that you don’t do the job for the opposition. You don’t leave the middle of the field wide open for the other team.

But these heroes of the micro moment, who take victory laps over to hoked up “gaffes” like the “Cuba” comment, these geniuses of the blogosphere, we’re supposed to think of as conservative? Is it now a major conservative philosophical point to destroy all primary foes and in turn take so many arrows yourself that the only candidates who can ever survive the process are the McCain types? (Since Reagan, we’ve only nominated people who are acceptable to the media. Then the media turns on them.)

If that’s being “Conservative” then screw that noise. That kind of Conservative is one to whom principle and honor mean very little. And I don’t care who gets angry over that. Not now.

This stupid notion of candidates as being “unserious” … Anyone want to take the abuse Rick Santorum takes in an “unserious” bid? Anyone willing to accept 25$ from little old ladies on a fixed income, to build up a campaign chest, in an “unserious” bid? Does anyone realize the gravity of such a charge, really?

This is the most important election since Abe Lincoln. And the yammerheads want to treat it like a stupid flame war in a Compuserve “politics” forum, circa 1985.

We need discussions about the tax plans and foreign policy, not “hey, hey, look, that guy is peeking at notes!!!” “Oh, hey, hey, he asked a clarifying question, is he stupid?”. Or my favorite, “I don’t like her voice!!!” That kind of garbage is as far from principled debate as “Piss Christ” was from art.

And the purveyors of this crap need to be called on it. I don’t even care who wins the nomination now. We may well lose a chance to restore the Republic, thanks to the attrition of principled Conservatives. Now we’re fighting over the spoils. If that’s the case, then I see no reason to pull any punches.

Yes, the candidates have to gut it out. We all know that. But we’re going to get stiffed again if we roll over, like we did with Dole, Bush, and McCain.

Anonymous November 18th, 2011 @ 5:10 am

The only one of the candidates with a totally defined “foreign policy” is Ron Paul. So I can’t get real excited over that. Reagan was in the same boat as Cain. For that matter so was Palin (before deciding not to run). The folks making the most sense are the ones pointing out that the policy should be “Stop apologizing for the USA” and “We win, the jihadists lose.”

Reagan didn’t come into the office with some genius foreign policy cred. Neither did “W”, and neither did Clinton, the “Rhodes Scholar” himself.

Jeff Song November 18th, 2011 @ 5:42 am

Bob, tell me what you think about what is in this article. I ask since it would force us to think a little differently on foreign policy. Have those that have been warning against the neocon propaganda been correct or at least partly correct?

Gingrich was polling at around 12 before his summer implosion. However, like Huntsman and Gary Johnson, Santorum never got more than a few percentage points. These 3 belong in a class at the bottom by themselves, because they never caught fire in over 6 months of campaigning. It’s hard to rise from the dead if your campaign was never alive to begin with.

It’s Romney v. Gingrich now, with a slight to moderate chance for a Perry comeback.

Bosun349 November 18th, 2011 @ 7:58 am

Thoughts on Cain blowing off the Union Leader:

1) On general principle, he should be toast in the NH primary now. Voters here take presidential politics seriously, and somebody who won’t consent to the thorough exploration and publication of his views gets downgraded by the voters pretty quickly.

2) Cain was a fool to pass up the interview for another reason, too: the Union Leader editorial board was the friendliest venue he could hope to find in New Hampshire. This is a newspaper, which like Cain, endorses waterboarding.

3) The loss of a shot at a Union Leader endorsement is less significant. The ultra-conservative UL editorial board is so out of sync with even Republican voters that they often endorse candidates who can’t win the state’s Republican primary. The paper retains an unwarranted reputation among out-of-state politicians, based on stories about long-ago publisher Bill Loeb and his savaging of Ed Muskie, but its days as an opinion leader are long over. Never was a top-notch journalistic enterprise. They obsessively cover the inside baseball of state politics, but the news hole is otherwise filled with reactionary crime/accident coverage to the exclusion of any thoughtful approach to major public issues or investigative reporting. Very quirky: whenever there’s a hurricane in Florida, they interview NH residents who’ve retired there–even if those people were nowhere near the path of the hurricane (sample front-page headline: “Former NH man unaffected by hurricane”). One of the things that really makes the UL unique is that they never, ever run any corrections.

Anonymous November 18th, 2011 @ 8:35 am

I don’t think so. Their biggest problem so far is that they include almost any mainstream “Conservative” in their definition of “Neocon.” I.e., if you’re not a Pat Buchanan style “paleocon” then you are a neocon.

Jews have lived throughout the region called the Levant, and in Iraq and surrounding areas for over a thousand years. During the Ottoman years, that region was the most multicultural place on Earth, with so many languages and cultures it boggled the mind.

Today meanwhile, despite the reign of the Ayatollahs, Iran’s population is still very western in outlook, and it’s true that Amadinejad has had to keep his tyranny held down a notch, because the population is quite large, highly educated, and simmering for revolt.

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